Judge: Google’s Tracking Not Harmful

It just got even tougher to stop a company from tracking your movements online.

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A federal judge in Delaware Wednesday dismissed a class-action lawsuit brought against Google and two other tech companies, arguing that the Web users who brought the case couldn’t prove that Google’s tracking practices caused them harm.

The plaintiffs were users of web browsers from Apple and Microsoft, which have settings that block “cookies,” the tiny pieces of code placed on computers to track users’ movements as they browse the Internet. The plaintiffs alleged that Google, and online advertisers Vibrant Media and the Media Innovation Group, had “tricked” the browsers into accepting cookies, and as a result were subject to targeted ads.

U.S. District Judge Sue Robinson wrote that the companies had circumvented the browsers’ settings, allowing users’ personal information to be sold to ad companies. But the judge said that the plaintiffs couldn’t show that they suffered because the companies collected and sold their information.

The case stems from a February 2012 discovery by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer that Google and three other online-advertising companies had circumvented Safari’s ad-blocker. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission subsequently sued Google for breaking promises to honor browsers’ privacy settings. Google agreed to pay $22.5 million last year to settle the case, while denying it did anything improper.

A Google spokeswoman said the company was “pleased” with the decision, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg. “Protecting the privacy and security of our users is one of our top priorities,” Google said in an emailed statement.

Google’s legal victory comes after a setback last month in a separate case involving the company’s Gmail service. In that case, a federal judge in Northern California denied Google’s effort to dismiss a case in which users alleged that the company violated wiretap laws by scanning their emails’ contents in order to target ads.

Mayer said the different outcomes for the two cases reflect conflicting privacy laws written before the digital age. “Courts are doing pretzel twists to slot modern electronic privacy issues into antiquated statutory schemes,” he said in an email. “Congress badly needs to update the nation’s privacy laws; we can’t leave the courts with so little guidance and expect consistent results.”